World

Kerry calls for more diplomatic security

US Senator John Kerry has called for Congress to do more to fund security at diplomatic missions after the deadly attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya earlier this year.

"Clearly mistakes were made," Kerry told a hearing considering an independent report about the September 11 attack in which the US ambassador was killed.

He pointed to failures to see the broader picture by officials focused on individual threats as well as Congressional responsibility for insufficient security funding.

"Congress has the power of the purse. We use it for any number of things, but it's our responsibility. And for years, we have asked our State Department to operate with increasingly lesser resources to conduct essential missions," said the Massachusetts senator, who is considered among the top picks to serve as next secretary of state.

State Department officials told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that efforts were already being made to address the failures that contributed to the attack.

"We learned some very hard and painful lessons in Benghazi. We are already acting on them. We have to do better," said Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

He pointed to actions already taken to protect diplomatic outposts, combat terrorism in North Africa and address "serious, systematic problems."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was to have testified at the hearing, but cancelled the appearance due to illness. She is now due to address the panel in January, but told Congress this week in a letter that she accepted the panel's 29 recommendations. Some of the findings are classified.

White House spokesman Jay Carney stressed the administration was already adopting all the report's recommendations.

"The president's priority is the safety of Americans serving abroad," he said. "The board has put forward a set of clear recommendations, and Secretary Clinton said we will have implementation of every recommendation under way by the time the next secretary of state takes office."

On Wednesday, the State Department's security chief Eric Boswell resigned and three other officials were disciplined in the fallout from the highly critical report.

The review board found that both the diplomatic security and the Near East bureaus failed to take steps to improve security at the Benghazi diplomatic mission.

Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other diplomatic staffers were killed in the orchestrated armed attack on the diplomatic mission and Central Intelligence Agency annex, which the US has blamed on Libyan militants linked to the terrorist network al-Qaeda.

The attack has produced political fallout in Washington. UN ambassador Susan Rice was forced to withdraw her name for consideration as secretary of state over remarks she made after the attack that connected it to angry protests over an anti-Islamic internet video. Officials later said there had been no protest and that the attack was carried out by terrorists.

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